So how to tell the true kilometres on a bike? Can you swap out the engine or the instrument cluster to make the bike more favourable to sell? Is the true odometer embedded in the ECU? On the hunt for used a sport bike and seeing some older bikes on Kijiji with very low km.
I think there are a lot of used bikes with low miles on them, people buy them and don't ride enough so they sell them.
Items like swingarm bushings, fork stanchion wear, leaky seals, worn peg rubbers or wheel bearings, these are the things that don't get serviced or replaced as frequently as they should and those can be a tell of a heavy used bike. Look at the brand of tyre if they are other then stock the bike is at least one set of tyres old. Does it have an aftermarket exhaust? Ask for the original parts and see if they are like new or have miles on them in addition to the replacement.
Most bikes dont get enough miles on them to bother rolling back the odo. The very few bikes that do see over 100,000 are normally kept and ridden for well past that. Odo would be the least of my worries on a used bike purchase. Look at condition of bike, miles barely matter. Most bike components age out before they mile out.
Well maintained ones will outlast their owners. The highest I ever got before doing a repair was 130,000 miles, that was a Honda 750 that only ever had service and wear items replaced. My friend recently sold a 600 Hornet with 200,000 KM, it was still in spec for compression and didn't use a drop of oil.
As for used bikes, a good visual inspection and review of the service log is the best you can do. MTO doesn't track mileage and it's pretty easy to roll back a speedo. I don't know of a way to extract mileage from an ECU -- I doubt you can.
Tons of people buy motorcycles and then rarely use them, or are Tim Hortons poseurs who just ride to the nearest Tims and sit and drink coffee all day with others of their like.
My VTX was 12 years old when I bought it and had just over 10,000KM on the odometer - less than 1000KM/year from the previous owner. Quite common. But looked new aside from the tires being originals that were hard as a rock. As mentioned, the look of all the common wear items is the telltale about mileage, not just the odometer. The same goes for cars...
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